Tag Archives: Crytek

If you haven’t covered yourself in the glory and bile that is Hunt: Showdown yet, you probably should stay awhile and listen. Up to five teams of two race around a dirty, gloomy swamp tracking a giant monster in order to claim a bounty on its head. If you’re not the one who kills it, fear not – now you get to kill each other instead. Interested? You should be.

Ryse: Son of Rome is probably one of the best-looking games on the planet, with Crytek’s muscle behind every pixel and CryEngine 3 showing off just how good games can look on the Xbox One. Its development was a difficult period for Crytek, with Microsoft pushing them for an early release with the Xbox One’s launch, timed to coincide with Sony’s Playstation 4 launch in November 2013. Now it looks like Crytek, fresh out of a financial crisis and eager to get back on its feet, is preparing a port of the game to be published on PC.

The PC version of Ryse: Son of Rome is set for a Holiday 2014 launch and it will be co-published by Deep Silver, the same company that took over Crytek UK in Nottingham and is currently overseeing the completion of Homefront: The Revolution.

Crytek, it appears, is falling apart. Less than a week out from the studio announcing that things were now fine and dandy and extra funding had been acquired to pay their staff and continue development there have been layoffs en masse from the Crytek Austin offices and the studio has additionally sold off the Homefront IP, which they had previously acquired from the now-defunct THQ back in 2012. What a mess this has been…

It’s safe to say that Crytek has been in a spot of bother throughout the last couple of weeks. We’ve had reports of UK-based staff members not being paid, developers walking out, and their Shanghai offices also taking strain. Throughout all of this, however, there’s been a wall of silence from Crytek itself. As with most things in the gaming industry, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and in the case of Crytek, there was most definitely fire.

The company has finally broken its silence and has provided a statement on the financial and staffing issues that have been experienced of late. Crytek has indeed been sourcing additional funds to aid them as they transition from “a development studio to an Online-Publisher”. That funding has been secured, but during the interim, many of the staff members throughout Crytek’s global company have been the ones who have suffered the most.

According to Kotaku’s sources, since yesterday the majority of Crytek UK’s employees are no longer going to work. This isn’t yet another industry lay-off session; they’ve stopped going to work because, much like their friends in the China-based Crytek offices, they haven’t been paid. Earlier in the week, it is believed that a group of Crytek UK employees handed the company an official grievance letter before leaving their posts and the building.

While the exact figure is unknown, some sources have indicated that up to 100 people have left Crytek UK since the company’s trouble began. Whether this includes the number of Crytek UK employees who were laid off last month is unknown.

Homefront: The Revolution, which was revealed at E3 last month, is currently in development at Crytek UK. That development has likely ceased or has at least hit a major slowdown since the staff departures. It has been suggested that the remaining Crytek UK staff are hopeful that the game’s publisher, Deep Silver, will purchase Crytek UK so that development on Homefront: The Revolution can continue. We also hope that happens, because what we saw of the game at E3 was looking really good.

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